The difficulty ramps up very quickly. Maybe I'm going about it wrong, maybe I should farm the generic dungeon more and then attempt the later ones with better preparations. If so, then the game really should say something to that effect.

"Here are some more difficult dungeons for you to try! Make sure to farm up some of the lower ones for better preparations."

It is quite hard, but I don't think that is a problem. There are a couple reasons that I believe that it's harder than I would expect it to be:

1) You have to earn your deities. You don't start out with those extra resources that can make or break a game.

2) The game has changed enough so that the your usual strategies don't work. Not only that, but the game continually changes from mission to mission much more so than the original, so it's harder to build up a tried and true strategy.

I said several times out loud: MAN! This is hard! But at the same time, I'm really enjoying the challenge. I am EXTREMELY impressed/pleased/not disappointed with this release. I can't believe it's the beta!

Yeah, glowing guardian is absolutely broken. Especially when combined with imawall. And the rogue - who offsets the fact that higher level monsters automatically get first strike. Even though you can't heal very fast or use fireball effectively.

If you remain at lvl 1 the session by using the first boon, you'll have gained like 13+ levels by the time you complete the dungeon.

It seems like there's a huge difficulty spike after you get halflings/gnomes - I've tried each of the 4 dungeons that unlocked (admittedly without farming for gold) and failed sorta badly at all of them.

Of course, now that I've got the unlock from each dungeon that'll make things easier. Maybe there could be a hint to that effect?

PeaceChaser wrote:It is quite hard, but I don't think that is a problem. There are a couple reasons that I believe that it's harder than I would expect it to be:

1) You have to earn your deities. You don't start out with those extra resources that can make or break a game.

2) The game has changed enough so that the your usual strategies don't work. Not only that, but the game continually changes from mission to mission much more so than the original, so it's harder to build up a tried and true strategy.

I said several times out loud: MAN! This is hard! But at the same time, I'm really enjoying the challenge. I am EXTREMELY impressed/pleased/not disappointed with this release. I can't believe it's the beta!

Ah, but that's the point of this thread!

The game has completely changed. I agree with most of your points: it's not the same ball of wax anymore. I have to learn and adapt, but the game doesn't help me do so. I'm calling for a better tutorial and for a more gradual difficulty curve.

I want to get my feet wet with this game before it starts going into full dungeon mode. So far, the only thing that's allowed me to keep playing is my love for the original. Otherwise, I'd have given up because of how frustrating it can be before you get the hang of it. Much more frustrating than its predecessor.

The difficulty is already being smoothed out: the curve on the four regional dungeons, Venture Cave and Den of Danger will be a little more generous with the next update, and we're busy testing out a bunch of quests to apply to these areas so that players have another way to build up strength and resources in the long term.

You won't see them just yet, but quite a few quests actually have item rewards which increase the shop pool (if you've unlocked THOSE yet) and give you some powerful tools to put into your adventuring locker as well.

... and yeah, we've taken note of the Glowing Guardian "humility exploit". Bye bye, repeatable boon casting. He should be useful enough even without that, we think.

Out of curiosity, after killing 4 boss goats (and watching the value go down) I've gotten 5 other trophies since then, yet when I brought back another goat horn the value went down again. Will it ever go back up?

I already posted that I thought the Northern Desert was unexpectedly hard (at least with Wizard) when done first. But...I had less trouble with the other three regional dungeons--possibly because I just had more unlocked. Possibly Thief/Fighter/Priest are just much better classes than Wizard when Wizard can't get 2 MP HALPMEH + 1 MP BYSSEPS.

I'll be interested to see the new Glowing Guardian (as the one I last played was hillariously broken). I think even one use of Humility will be worth worshiping GG for (reminds me of the +1 exp boon for Pactmaker). Taurog is also pretty good. Mysterra is pretty ho-hum right now, but will be a lot better once I can combine the "extra mana but all enemies get magic defence" boon with something like the healing glyph; still a useful god for the +25% fireball damage (deal physical damage to the boss first, then buy this boon). Tiki Tooki seems...hard to get a big advantage out of; I was able to afford one boon right at the end of the game, got first strike, and used it like...twice. Maybe the other potion types are worth a boon and a converted potion, though? I've yet to actually try them.